


If This Is Love

by wonder_boy



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Angst, Bad Parent Jessica Whitly, Child Abuse, Child Neglect, Hurt No Comfort, Malcolm Bright Needs a Hug, Pre-Canon, Whump, Whumptober
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-16
Updated: 2020-10-16
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:15:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27047806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wonder_boy/pseuds/wonder_boy
Summary: The sound of heels clacking against the concrete floors aren’t enough warning.-For Whumptober Day 16: Forced to Beg
Relationships: Malcolm Bright & Jessica Whitly, Malcolm Bright & Martin Whitly
Comments: 6
Kudos: 47





	If This Is Love

**Author's Note:**

> I swear I haven't forgotten about you guys! I've been busy doing something big, if you catch my drift. Please read the tags! This content isn't for everyone - Trigger Warning for heavy child abuse. Please take care of yourselves first. Other than that, enjoy!

He knows he shouldn’t be down in the basement.

He knows he shouldn’t be searching for any scraps that didn’t get destroyed by the fire.

He knows that coming down here is strictly off limits but he chooses to bypass his mother’s rules in a desperate attempt to find comfort where it’s not given.

Malcolm quietly creeps through the basement to the exact spot where he keeps a photo of his father hidden out of plain sight. He rummages through a box near the corner until his fingers catch the corners of an old picture frame, then he grabs on to it, and pulls it out.

Dust settles in the air around him but it’s not enough to switch his focus from the frame he’s holding by his hands.

He takes a good long look at it, reminiscing on a time that felt so long ago, a time where normalcy existed and everyone loved each other unconditionally. His father beams while he holds Malcolm next to him by the shoulders, his excitement palpable through the photo.

 _God_ , he misses him so much.

The sound of heels clacking against the concrete floors aren’t enough warning.

The sound of a door slamming against the wall doesn’t give him enough time, and his heart explodes in his chest as the anxiety bubbles over, building and building until the heels make themselves known.

He forgot to close the basement door.

 _She’s coming_ , he thinks. _No no no no–!_

His head swivels, darting between the ceiling-high shelves of crowded boxes and empty chests that he swears are hidden with girls he can’t save.

She can’t get to him. If she gets to him, she’ll–

“Malcolm Whitly!”

Her voice rings through the halls, low and threatening like storm clouds, reigning the promise of a storm he’s about to get caught in.

He’s in so much trouble.

Malcolm doesn’t get more than four steps toward the box he grabbed the frame from before Jessica snatches him by his arm and forces him to stand front and center.

“What did I tell you about coming down here?” It’s rhetorical – he knows the rules, and he knows that he’s been warned several times not to scour the basement for any remnants of his father. So, he doesn’t respond. “Huh? Answer me!”

His head drops to his chin, and his eyes burn holes in the ground. The last thing he wants to do is look into his mother’s eyes right now. Under her matching blues won’t be the love he used to find there. It’s been replaced by sorrow, grief, the burning resentment for his father, and the haziness under the guise of her favorite liquor.

His arm throbs under his nightgown. If he plays his cards right, he can come out with nothing more than a bruise that can easily be covered up by a jacket.

No kiss goodnight from her tonight, but he can sneak into Ainsley’s room and find unbridled love there, reaching out to her big brother for a big hug.

She fervently inspects him from head to toe to see what he got in to, or if he took something. Malcolm trembles under her heated gaze the longer he stands there, anxiously waiting for the screaming and drunken yelling that’s bound to come.

Then her eyes land on the dusty, faded brown frame, carrying an old photo of her son and his father, cuddled together in the middle of the woods. A frame that was somehow spared from the fire, but it ignites a scorching fury beneath in her bones and blazes through her blood. All she sees is red.

Impulse takes over.

Jessica grips Malcolm’s arm that’s holding the frame and rips it from his hands, ignoring the whimper of true fear leave his lips. “Where did you get this?” she spits, gripping him harder and pulling him closer to her face. “I’m not going to say it again.”

The _stench_ of alcohol on her breath is so potent in his face that he likens it to poison, a toxic fume that suffocates him but somehow comforts her.

“I found it,” he chokes out, turning his head away so he doesn’t have to smell her breath.

She scoffs. “ _Found_ it? You just _found_ it lying in a random box full of crap we haven’t touched in years?” Malcolm hesitantly nods, but it only pisses her off even more. Jessica shakes him as she tightens her grip on his arm, practically snarling, her teeth clenched tightly. “Do you think I’m stupid, Malcolm? Hm? What do you take me for? Some lowlife mother who can’t tell the difference between her son lying and telling the truth?” she yells in his face.

“Do you think I’m _that_ dumb, Malcolm?”

He anxiously shakes his head but it’s no use, and her grip on his arm only tightens. He can feel the tears sting in the corner of his eyes and his lip start to quiver under his mother’s increasing strength. “Answer me!”

“No!” he whines. He quickly decides that she’s not going to see him cry. It only made things worse for him.

Crying meant that he was guilty of snooping around when he knows better. Tears were a sign of weakness.

She used to coddle him at night until his cries were no more and the tears finally stopped. She used to hold him after he was ravished by a night terror and shaking so much that he couldn’t sit still. She used to be there for him when he was at his lowest, but recently, it only seems like he’s nothing more than a useless burden to carry.

Crying gave her an excuse.

An outlet for her own frustrations and insecurities.

Her fingers grasp the frame with enough vigor to make it burst in her hand, but it stays put together, unaffected by her growing rage.

“Why is it still here?” she asks in a low voice. She doesn’t turn her head to look at him, but instead, keeps her eyes on the photo.

_Uh oh._

“I found it in one of the boxes...” he says. Unfortunately, it already sounds like a lie. “I didn’t know it was there. I just saw it.”

Jessica hums, and Malcolm swallows the lump in his throat. She quietly inspects the photo a bit longer, not paying attention to him but keeps her grip on his arm tight. It’s loosened ever so slightly now that she’s occupied. Still, it’s not enough to shake the rising fear in his small frame.

He’s done this dance before. Nothing good ever comes from the silence looming over his head.

For a while, nothing happens. She’s perfectly still as if she wasn’t yelling at him just a few seconds ago, seemingly no longer furious at him for snooping in the basement for crumbs of his father. It’s as if the fire never happened.

Then, she shifts. Jessica lifts up the frame above her head–

“Mom, _no_!”

–and slams it against the concrete with a resounding crash that can be heard throughout the house.

Glass shatters on the ground in a million little shattered pieces under their feet, scattering underneath the shelves and heavy boxes, piling in the forgotten cracks of the foundation. Shards come springing up in the air from the force of her throw and crash into his sides and on his back.

_Dad – I need to get dad!_

Malcolm instinctively reaches down to pick up the crumpled photo among the shards of glass but he’s yanked back right into Jessica’ face again.

“You kept a photo of him behind my back!”

Her hand comes across his face. There’s no time to react.

Jessica _shoves_ Malcolm to the ground. He crash lands on the pile of glass and drops his hands at the last second to break his fall, only to cry out at the sharp pain shooting through his palms, stinging as they cut through his skin. The shock of the pain pushes him over the edge, and the tears he’s been holding back finally spill over hot and heavy, staining his cheeks and pouring down to his chin.

She steps over to him, practically leering at the boy on the ground. Consumed by the alcohol and the grief that drove her down here, Jessica can’t shake with anger and fury, enraged by one simple act that makes her feel less than.

“Don’t you ever disrespect me like that again, do you hear me?” she yells, brows furrowed.

“Yes!”

“Yes what?”

“Yes ma’am!” he screams, breaking down and openly sobbing through the fear and the pain.

Then she does the unexpected. Something a child could never imagine their mother to do to them.

Malcolm can see the blind rage in her eyes as she steps closer to him, glass cracking and splitting underneath her heels. It terrifies him right down to his core. He’s too sore, too scared, too fractured to run away from her – if he tried, there would be hell to pay.

He knows he needs to take whatever’s coming to him.

After all, he disobeyed her.

Standing right on top of Malcolm, Jessica makes a swipe at him and Malcolm quickly shields his face on instinct, cowering away from her but gets nowhere.

 _Dad, dad!_ Tears fall even harder as his body trembles. _Dad, save me! I’m scared!_

Her hand grips his wrist then hoists him up in the air as far as his body will let her without dragging her down, leaving him to scramble to his feet and his neck almost snaps back as he’s hoisted up. “Say you’re sorry!”

She’s practically screaming now. It’s not over.

“Please!” he cries out instead. “You’re hurting me!”

“You _deliberately_ went behind my back after I burned everything of your fathers and you _hid_ this from me. Do you know what you did?” she roars, shaking his arm and squeezing his wrist enough to cut off his circulation. “Do you know what you did?”

A choked sob escapes his lips instead of an apology. It’s not enough to deter Jessica.

“Don’t you _ever_ disobey me like that again! Do I make myself clear?”

He’s full on sobbing now, whether from the pain in his body or out of fear from the screeching of the monster bent on making him suffer for what he did.

Oh, wait – monsters don’t exist.

“Say you’re sorry, damn it!”

Jessica's grip on his arm gets impossibly tighter on his wrist to the point where Malcolm can’t feel his arm anymore, and it startles him into a panic.

_Make it stop, make it stop, make it stop–_

_“Say it!”_

“I’m sorry!” he sobs. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, mommy, I’m _sorry_!” The numb tingling in his arm forces him to push at her hand with his other hand, trying to pull himself away from the pain but it’s no use. The pain won’t stop until she lets go. “ _Please_!” he begs, voice shaking through the tears. “Please let me go, mommy, _please_!”

The last part comes out in a sobbing drawl, painful and wrought with emotion that’s loud enough to shake Jessica from her reign and assess the damage she’s left in her wake.

A shattered frame and her shattered son. Both broken and fractured by her own hands.

Her eyes widen at the crying boy who stands limp in her arms, showing every indication that he wants to run away, and she suddenly goes quiet as the tension leaves her body. Even with all of the alcohol in her system, she’s as sober as she’s ever been.

He’s pulling away from her with such force that he trips over his feet and falls the second she lets go of his wrist, and collapses in the glass on his arm.

It doesn’t hurt as much as the first time, shock and adrenaline still high. The tears keep flowing down his cheeks like endless streams, his body aches and the pain in his heart feels like it’s going to swallow him whole until he’s mute again.

His small, shaking hand reaches out for the picture among the broken glass, and when he tucks it to his chest for comfort, a fresh wave of tears start to fall down his face.

Jessica almost feels sick to her stomach as the guilt begins washing over her in crushing waves. This is not like her. This isn’t who she is. There’s a word for what she’s done, a word that brings a bitter taste in her mouth but she can’t stand to think about it because that’s not the type of _parent_ she is. She would never–

Her hand goes up to her mouth, but falls short of covering it. Nausea brings regret with it as she watches her son cry to himself on the floor, shaking like a leaf with cuts and fresh scars while he clings to a photo of her husband, and leans away from her.

He definitely doesn’t want her comfort now. Perhaps, not ever. So, she steels her expression and keeps her body rigid and unwelcoming. She needs to double down and save face.

“Go upstairs and get ready for bed.”

He’s thankful for the reprieve. Malcolm makes a beeline for the basement door and runs straight to his bathroom without turning back, and locks himself in. He doesn’t even ask the nanny to help him tend to the small gashes; it adds another stressor for his mother that he _definitely_ doesn’t need.

No one can know. Not even his father.

So, he shoulders the burden of cleaning himself up on his own. Tweezers, a shower, ointment and Band-Aid’s aren’t enough to make him shake any less or want his father any less.

He stumbles to his room covered in bright blue bandages. It’s not even his bedtime yet but he doesn’t care. Before he shuts the door behind him, he debates going over to Ainsley’s room to say goodnight to her, and if she’s somewhat awake, he can still get a hug from her. He quickly decides against it – she asks _way_ too many questions.

He looks down at the photo in his hands. It can’t grace the light of day ever again.

He crouches down under his bed and pulls out a red shoebox covered in stickers and filled with his little treasures he hides for himself. He pulls off the lid ever so slowly. His mother won’t find it here.

With shaking, trembling hands, Malcolm slowly places the photo at the bottom of the box among the trinkets he’s collected, and sits back on his heels with his hands in his lap.

As much as he knows it’s not okay, that it’s wrong to feel the way he does, but he can’t deny what's going on inside of his heart. He misses his father _so_ much, and he would do _anything_ to have him home right now.

If he hadn’t made that phone call, none of this would be happening right now. His mother wouldn’t be a drunken mess who hates him for what he did, and his father wouldn’t be in some cage far away from his home where he’s supposed to be.

If he hadn’t taken his father away from his mother, she wouldn’t be drinking herself to death every night. He made her sad and lonely, and left her without someone to love her. She has no one to love, and neither does he.

It’s his fault that he’s aching all over, and he knows he deserves it for making his mother the way she is. She would still love him, cuddle him, comfort him if he just kept his mouth shut.

Malcolm stares at the soaked Band-Aid on this hand.

He deserved it.

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to scream at me @wonder-boy on Tumblr. Thanks for reading!


End file.
